Hey everyone! I'm Farrah McQueen, a media composer from Naples, Florida and I'll be starting at USC this Fall 2025 as a Composition major (possibly double-majoring in Game Development & Interaction Design). I sing and play piano (12 years), and I've been joyfully composing for 3 years. I'm super excited to be a part of GEMS this year and meet everyone!

As an avid videogame enjoyer, I was inspired by story-based RPGs to explore videogame scoring. During sophomore year at Choate Rosemary Hall high school (where I won the Hicks Lawrence Prize for Excellence in Music), I took a class through Berklee—“Interactive Scoring for Games” by Michael Sweet—and fell in love with the intricacies and possibilities of interactive game music.

Falling into the Star Wars rabbit hole opened me up to exciting possibilities in film music. Eager to explore further, I filled my summers with scoring/composition camps (Juilliard, Berklee, Interlochen, NYU) and during senior year I created a directed study class called “Film & Media Scoring” where I studied the history of music in media and creatively rescored film clips. I've performed my compositions publicly (eg, Women Composers Festival of Hartford) and I'm currently scoring Dear Emory (a student film by director Asher Rigo) and Winter (a game I made).

Composition has been such a source of joy and passion for me. One thing I’m eager to explore is scoring for virtual reality experiences! I’ve been working on a concept for one such VR experience, titled “The Wonder Project”, which guides the user’s emotion toward that of wonder using biofeedback-centered musical adaptability and an abstract, shifting, virtual landscape. The future for media scoring looks irresistibly exciting, and I'm eager to be at the forefront to experience it!